Lisa Jackson - Wicked Game

Hearing Mac’s door slam, Mitch looked his way. There was a moment or two of blankness, then recognition dawned. He didn’t offer to shake hands, just kept wiping his own on the rag as his expression grew grimmer. Mac introduced himself but it wasn’t necessary as Mitch responded with, “I knew you’d come. You’ve talked to everybody else. But God, man, on this day? You know about Glenn, don’t you?”

“I went to the scene last night.”

“I don’t want to talk to you. Especially now.” The smell of oil and grease permeated the air and an old greyhound was lying on a rug near the back door.

Mac realized Mitch was fighting back tears and felt a twinge of pity. He’d never really thought Mitch had anything to do with Jessie’s disappearance, then or now, but he felt he might know something-maybe something he didn’t know he knew. “I’m sorry about Glenn,” Mac said, meaning it.

“You think it has something to do with-Jessie? Is that why you’re here, man?”

“Do you?” Mac asked curiously.

“I guess it could just be a coincidence.” He sounded as doubtful as Mac felt.

“We’ll know more after the fire investigator’s report.”

“Has to be arson, doesn’t it?”

“Why do you say that?”

Mitch gazed at him guilelessly. “Well, things like that don’t just happen. The restaurant just goes up. How? A gas leak? Or a burner on the stove left on near something flammable? Grease fire? Doesn’t sound like it from what I’ve heard.”

“What have you heard? Who called you?”

“Scott. He was freaking, man. Glenn and I were friends, but Scott was his best friend. They were kind of mad at each other, but it was like they were brothers.”

“Scott thinks it’s arson?”

“I don’t know for sure. He just said Glenn was inside and it shouldn’t have happened. He said she cursed us.”

“Jessie?”

“Yeah, Jessie.” His face flushed as if he heard the idiocy of his statement. “Who else?”

“What happened all those years ago, Mitch?” Mac asked quietly. He felt his pulse rush a bit, wondering if this was the moment someone finally opened up to him.

Mitch’s eyes watered as the tears he’d been fighting got the better of him and spilled down his cheeks. “Not a damn thing,” he said wearily. “That’s the problem, man. Nothing happened to her. She just left, but now she’s back even more than she was in high school. Sending notes. Burning down the restaurant. Killing Glenn. If she isn’t alive, then she’s making it happen from the grave. I don’t know how, but she’s behind all of this. She is. Back then some people thought she was weird, y’know. Like she had ESP or somethin’. I thought it was all just crap, but now…who the hell knows?” He reached a hand toward an upper, nonexistent shirt pocket, then dropped it. “I need a smoke,” he said and headed toward the office where he grabbed a pack of cigarettes from a jacket hung on a peg. He shook one out, then pushed through a back door to the rear of the building. Mac followed. The greyhound, long snout grizzled with age, didn’t move.

“What notes?” Mac asked quietly as Mitch cupped his hand over the lighted end of the cigarette and sucked hard on the other. Both of his hands were shaking, and as if noticing Mac’s stare, he clenched one and pulled out the cigarette from his mouth with the other, moving it to hide his tremor.

“‘What are little boys made of? Frogs and snails and puppy dogs’ tails.’” He puffed harder on the cigarette, as if the carcinogenic smoke were giving life, not taking it. Mitch made a half-choked sound. “She used to say it, now she’s writing it down.”

“What do you mean?”

“That’s the same damned nursery rhyme she used to taunt us with. She’d say it and she had a way of making it sound dirty. Sexy. And now she’s goddamned sending them to us!”

“You got a nursery rhyme note?” Mac asked carefully.

“That fuckin’ nursery rhyme. The one she used to sing. Yes. I got it. From her.” He was nodding rapidly and took another drag.

“From Jessie.”

“That’s what I said, man.” He was coming visibly undone.

“It came in the mail? Had a return address?”

“Fuck, yeah…I mean, it came in the mail. No return address.” Abruptly he went back inside and yanked a card from another pocket of the same jacket that had held his cigarettes. He handed it to Mac and took a step back, staring at it as if it were poisonous. “You take it. Maybe it’ll help you find her, but when you do, make sure she stays the hell away from me!”

The offices of Salchow, Wendt, and Delacroix were in Portland’s Pearl District in the Grassle Building, a gray granite and glass monolith that knifed upward thirty stories. Today, a black and gray sky hovered outside and Christopher Delacroix III gazed at it with a grim expression as he dropped the receiver to his office phone into its cradle.

Detective Samuel “Mac” McNally had called. He’d wanted to know if The Third had received a nursery rhyme note in the mail.

Now The Third opened a desk drawer and pulled out the blue envelope. Initially, he’d been more perplexed than alarmed. It was childish. The work of some amateur who was trying to goad them. He’d talked to Jarrett and learned he’d received one, too, so he’d assumed the rest of the guys had gotten one.

But he’d kind of hoped the notes would escape McNally’s notice. They would just add fuel to the Jessie fire, and he was getting really sick and tired of even thinking about her. She’d been a high school tease, for crying out loud. None of them had gotten lucky with her. Jarrett sure as hell hadn’t and neither of those losers, Mitch and Glenn, ever got close.

He closed his eyes, feeling a jolt of regret. The fire and discovery of a body at Blue Note was all over the news. It was clear that the body was Glenn’s, though that piece of information hadn’t been officially released as yet. Glenn. Dull, unhappy Glenn. He and Jarrett had used both Glenn and Mitch as their personal whipping boys over the years. He knew it. Usually didn’t care all that much. But today…

“Damn you, Jezebel,” The Third said quietly to the boiling dark gray clouds beyond his windows.

His intercom beeped gently, a soft tone that befitted the moneyed appearance of his office. “Yes,” he said, depressing the switch.

“A Mr. Walker and Ms. Sutcliff would like to see you. They don’t have an appointment.”

The notes…and Glenn’s death…

“Send ’em up,” The Third said.

Becca and Hudson rode in the Grassle Building’s glass elevator in one of two cubicles that shot upward and offered a dizzying view of downtown Portland and the Willamette River. It gave Becca a disembodied feeling that she could have done without, and she was glad to step onto the dark gray carpeting of the twenty-fourth floor.

The Third had a corner office, and his desk faced away from windows that gazed toward another building farther west whose windows stared back like a row of unblinking eyes. The whole room was made of glass and chrome and black leather, a far cry from the wood-paneled offices of the firm Becca worked for. It wasn’t a surprise that The Third’s law firm was as slick as he was.

The Third himself was dressed in a navy blue suit and crimson tie, and as they entered he waved them toward a set of black and chrome director’s chairs on the other side of his desk. Neither Becca nor Hudson took a seat, preferring to stand.

“I’m guessing you want to see the note,” The Third said. He slid open a drawer, pulled out a card, and handed it to Hudson, who held it for Becca to see. Christopher was written in an uneven hand on one side of the white card and the same nursery rhyme was on the other.